NHN Japan's Casual Games Continue to Kill it on Line

20M downloads for Line Pop[/caption]More milestones for NHN Japan and its Line chat app, which is continuing to prove its worth as a game platform. After the company passed the lofty 100 million user figure last week, there’s word today that its popular game Line Pop has been downloaded by 20 million users, and Line Bubble by 10 million users.

Line Pop took 56 days to reach the milestone, having racked up 10 million downloads in its first 12 days. Line Bubble has been impressive too, with its 10 million downloads coming within its first 28 days. Both games are about as casual as they come, and personally I’m not a big fan. I’ve played them both, and uninstalled them after just a few days – and I wonder how many of the aforementioned downloaders have done the same. Nevertheless, I still get messages from friends whose score I’ve beaten ¹, asking me back to the game via Line chat messages.

And while I’m not really into these games, my wife is a huge Line Birzzle fan (another similarly casual puzzle game from NHN Japan) and I’m not sure if a day has passed in the last three months where she hasn’t played it.

The genius of Line is that it has a persistent connection with users, and can push new games and apps like these in front of them regularly as long as they continue to use the chat app (see picture, lower left). As I log in today, I see there’s a new Line Band app, which is a sort of group relationship manager. I’m not going to download it, but I think it’s impressive that Line can keep me aware of new products in this manner.

If you’d like to try Line’s full suite of casual games for yourself, you can get the Line app and browse them from the more/game section. [Via japan.internet.com]